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President Obama on 7.1 million enrollment in health law: 'It's working -- helping people from coast to coast'

obama_healthcare.jpg

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden celebrate the enrollment of 7.1 million Americans under the Affordable Care Act -- a figure that seemed out of reach just a week ago.
(The Associated Press)

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats proclaimed some vindication Tuesday after a late-surge pushed enrollment over the administration's original goal of 7 million. Republicans still called Obamacare a bad law.

At a Rose Garden announcement with Vice President Joe Biden, the president said the health law is working as he suggested it would when Congress, with all Democratic votes, passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The 7.1 million enrollment announcement Tuesday came despite a terrible rollout of the law's healthcare.gov website, which left many people stymied when they tried to enroll for coverage beginning Oct. 1 and for weeks thereafter.

"But this law is doing what it's supposed to do. It's working. It's helping people from coast to coast," Obama said Tuesday. Still, he said he doesn't understand "the lengths to which critics have gone to scare people or undermine the law, or try to repeal the law without offering any plausible alternative."

"Many of the tall tales that have been told about this law have been debunked," the president said. "There are still no death panels. Armageddon has not arrived. Instead, this law is helping millions of Americans, and in the coming years it will help millions more.

But he conceded that there are still problems ahead, noting that he wants to work with mostly Republican governors, including Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who have refused to implement a key element of the 2010 law, an expansion of Medicaid that would have provided health care to millions more uninsured low income Americans.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., whose re-election is in jeopardy because of her vote for the law, praised the announcement of 7.1 million enrollees, a number that is likely to grow in coming days as state exchanges offer updated counts and some people are given additional time to sign up past Monday's 2014 deadline to avoid the law's penalties for non-coverage.

"Today's enrollment announcement confirms what I have said since day one -- the Affordable Care Act holds great promise and is getting stronger every day," Landrieu said. "Already, it is helping 50,000 Louisianans access quality, affordable health coverage that they can count on, and it has the potential to help another 240,000 individuals in working families across the state if Governor Jindal would say yes and do the right thing."

"I have also said since day one that the Affordable Care Act is not perfect. No law is. That is why I continue to push to make it work even better, including proposals to expand the number of ways people can purchase coverage. It is time for Republicans to stop the drumbeat of repeal and join us to make the Affordable Care Act work better," Landrieu said.

"The announcement by the Obama Administration does not explain how Obamacare is functioning," said Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, Landrieu's lead GOP Senate challenger. "Critical information like the age of enrollees, whether they have paid their premiums and how many require subsidies has not been made available. Without this information, all today's announcement represents is the cherry-picking of data in order to make Obamacare look good."

Said Sen. David Vitter, R-La: "While President Obama is celebrating forcing people into an unwanted, unpopular law, the rest of the country is still finding out how much more they have to pay in premiums."

And Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, like Cassidy, said the nation needs to see more than "intentionally vague enrollment numbers," to truly evaluate the Affordable Care Act.

Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, said it's time for Republicans to "end their repeal-at-all-cost agenda so we can continue to work on moving this law forward."

"For the first time in history, Americans now have peace of mind when it comes to getting health insurance to protect their health and the health of their families," Richmond said. "They are no longer excluded due to preexisting conditions, seniors are seeing tremendous savings on their prescription drugs, and millions of young people are now covered under their parent's plans."

"We have a responsibility to ensure every citizen has access to reliable health insurance at a reasonable cost," Richmond continued. "The repeated attempts to sabotage the law undermine that responsibility and jeopardize the health and financial security of millions of Americans."

At the Rose Garden, the president gave some examples of people who were helped by the Affordable Care Act's requirement that insurers not discriminate against people based on pre-existing conditions.

"Sean Casey, from Solana Beach, California, always made sure to cover his family on the private market," Obama said. "But preexisting medical conditions meant his annual tab was over $30,000. The Affordable Care Act changed that. See, if you have a preexisting condition, like being a cancer survivor, or if you suffer chronic pain from a tough job, or even if you've just been charged more for being a woman -- you can no longer be charged more than anybody else. So this year, the Casey family's premiums will fall from over $30,000 to under $9,000

'"These savings,'" he quoted Casey as saying, '"will almost offset the cost of our daughter's first year in college.'"

Obama said not all problems have been
solved and he took a shot at Jindal and other governors who haven't implemented
the Medicaid expansion - funded entirely by the federal government for the
first three years and no less than 90 percent after that.

"Premiums are still rising for families
who have insurance, whether you get it through your employer or you buy it on
your own -- that's been true every year for decades," Obama said. "But, so far, those premiums have risen more
slowly since the Affordable Care Act passed than at any time in the past 50
years. It's also true that, despite this
law, millions of Americans remain uncovered in part because governors in some
states for political reasons have deliberately refused to expand coverage under
this law. But we're going to work on
that. And we'll work to get more Americans covered with each passing year."

Jindal has said that the Medicaid
program is too inefficient, and the cost, even with the large federal payout,
would be too expensive for state taxpayers.